Art Lab in Italy 2016

My paintings informed by a combination of personal history, fantasy and mystery. Most recent work focuses on documentary portraiture where I explore cultural identity and each character.

I’ve always been attracted to religious paintings of the 15th century Flemish and Italian Renaissance artists. Their iconic, intimate compositions, the stoic expressions and understated gestures, the gracefulness of the forms, all rendered with a perfect balance and exquisite technical execution all speak to me of the enduring power of beauty to transcend context.

My multicultural background has given me insight into understanding our world. As a teacher I seek to inspire my students to accept other cultures, and to explore ways to incorporate visual art, history, and current events into our life. I belief that differences are to be welcomed not rejected.

Fatima Azimova

I was born in in Uzbekistan, a former USSR country, in Tashkent City. My childhood was during the Soviet Union era. I grew up in a middle class family with multicultural parents of Uzbek and Armenian origins. From my early childhood I was exposed to an extreme diversity in cultures which played an important role in the feature development of my artistic vision. Since I can remember, I drew on every surface I could get my hands on. My Mother used to say how the walls in our house were covered with my drawings up to my height so anyone could see how tall I was. There was never a question of who I wanted to be when I grew up, art is not what I do but who I am.

“EliZe” da Jose – Artist Statement

I understand art as a way of emotionally experiencing reality and a universal language of

communication.

Without conscious e?ort and thought, I try to fill my paintings with expressions strong

enough to let the spectator feel the energy put in the depth of the canvas, transforming the

perception of picture into his own art act.

Most recently, I find myself inspired to focus on developing and exploring the connection

between iconography and abstraction in light of Cosmism philosophy. The inspiration of

this uniquely blended style came about as briefly explained in the following.

I believe that abstract painting was and still is an artist’s attempt at capturing and

expressing Plato's world of ideas which is invisible to the earthly eyes. Then, at the

beginning of the 20th century came the avant-gardism of Filonov and Malevich which was a

rebellion against physicality, materialism and petty-bourgeois consumption.

Iconography takes its roots from the symbiosis of antique vivid imagery and spiritual

practices of Ancient Egypt. From ancient times to the present day, man has never stopped

asking himself questions about who he is and what his true role in this world is.

My newfound unique style of blending iconography and abstract painting is somehow an

endeavour to continue humanity’s perennial e?ort and desire to capture and express the

depth of the invisible world via visible materials, to have a glimpse of the heavenly realm via

earthly instruments, akin to Plato and Malevich’s line of thinking.

In my work, I try to find an image of the elusive other shore - where every soul aspires to go -

and trying to find artful means to communicate what is di?icult to express in words.

ELIZAVETA DAJOSE (Artist Name: Elize)

Elize daJose is a professional artist, sculptor, iconographer and illustrator.

Her artworks primarily consist of a unique blend of abstract art and icon painting, experimenting with various materials, although her favorite media remain acrylic painting and ceramics.

Born in Moscow, Russia, her life as an artist started at a very young age. One day on a snowy street in her hometown, she bought Kazimir Malevich’s book from a peddler which turned her consciousness upside down and defined her entire life path.

From 1996 to 2000, she religiously undertook painting, sculpture, and graphics in various workshops of Moscow artists.

Since 2001, she has been working in the creative workshops of the Babushkinsky Sculpture Combine and in 2002, she became a member of the Moscow Union of Artists, sculpture section.

From 2002 to 2010, she actively participated in group exhibitions at the Central House of Artists, Gallery on Kuznetsky Most, Darwin Museum, and Timiryazev Museum.

In 2010, she participated in the Annual Art Juried Competition in Los Angeles, CA, and became a laureate.

In 2011, she took part in the collective exhibition "Woman Day Art Exhibits" at the Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, CA, and in 2012 she had a solo exhibition "Three Artists" at Liz Loft Gallery, LA, CA.

In 2016, Elize moved to California and actively participated in collective exhibitions, including the "Summer Exhibit" at Bergamot Station Art Center in Santa Monica (2016), "Brain Art Event" at Lark Gallery/The Chiari Project in West Hollywood (2017), and "The Art of Transformation" at Brick & Mortar Loiter Galleries in Long Beach (2023), among many others.

In 2025, Elize was awarded the Silver Medal at the New York International Art Juried Competition, "The Light from the Other Shore."

In 2026, an essay featuring Elize's creativity and spiritual development was published in the book "Revelations of the Artist - Deep Calls to Deep", curated by ArtServe International.

Elize is an active member of the Los Angeles Art Association and Riverside Community Arts Association. She is currently represented by Lark Gallery in West Hollywood and Literary Engineers, LLC in Benicia, CA.

My paintings begin with an idea, association, memory, image and context. Context includes physical, emotional and intellectual surroundings. As I work in a variety of media, and in various disciplines, culture as well as landscape is invariably reflected in my work.

I respond to the new image as it is formed, stroke by stroke, wash by wash, and I arrive at unfamiliar realms. As the continuously evolving image assumes form and dimension, I continue to coax it with greater light, shadow, texture. I add new associations, words, experiences throughout the gestation of the painting. At some points I drop a wash over the entire painting. When that dries, certain aspects of the image have been obscured and certain others revealed. I continue to illuminate and obscure form until finally a thoroughly new image emerges, and seems to “breathe”. I know then that my task is to make it more of itself by tweaking the light/color/shadow to accentuate the dimensionality of the new form. In the last of the many months each work requires, (sometimes as much as a year), I sit with it, waiting for it to “ask” to add light here, or add shadow there, increase texture here, or mitigate text there. Each painting is a world of its own, with its own rationality, its own sense of space, architecture, flora & sometimes fauna.

My process is one of call & response between my inner and outer worlds, a dynamic dialog between my self & the emerging image. I call this metaphysical surrealism.

Gilah Yelin Hirsch, (BA UC Berkeley, MFA UCLA), is a painter, writer, theorist, filmmaker, lecturer and Professor of Art at California State University, Dominguez Hills (Los Angeles). An internationally exhibiting artist in over 250 exhibitions since 1968 including the Whitney Museum (NYC), the LA County Museum of Art, and acquired by many major public and private collections, including the, Skirball Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Alexander Braun Collection, Budapest and the Slovak National Museum, Hirsch’s work has been reviewed extensively worldwide and has appeared on covers and within dozens of international publications. Hirsch’s own articles and theoretical papers have been published in scholarly journals internationally (e.g. MIT’s Leonardo; International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies; Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal; Journal of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; Collections of Foreign Studies on Shamanism, Dalian Nationalities University, China); She has also authored the book Demonic to Divine: The Double Life of Shulamis Yelin (Vehicule Press). Hirsch’s film Cosmography: The Writing of the Universe, an investigation into the relation between origin of alphabet, pattern in nature and the neurology of perception and cognition, has received worldwide interdisciplinary notice. Her current film, Reading the Landscape, brings these concepts to children of all ages in sixteen languages and cultures.

I make art

to communicate

what I cannot communicate with words;

what I need to say

about what's going on in the world around us;

what I cannot fix;

what I wish I could make different

with my paint and clay

or metal and wood;

I work very hard at it -

always with my hands,

smearing, scraping, sanding -

until the experience becomes intimately personal;

communication is at the heart of every creation,

wedded to a humanistic concern;

I yearn with passion to make sense of it all;

fulfillment comes

only after I am personally satisfied

with having known, experienced and conveyed -

or at least tried to convey,

an ongoing, meaningful conversation;

a conversation that has found its way in the work itself;

a conversation that may potentially transpire

a continuance of the same with each viewer -

long after the paint has dried.

Julienne Johnson is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture, and assemblage. She has been engaged professionally in a variety of other creative disciplines, most notably songwriting, with both Grammy and Dove Award nominations to her credit. Her latest music was released in Oslo, Norway, April 2019 for award winning producer, Knut Asphol. Her poetry has been published in the United States, and the UK. Despite her success in these areas, Johnson's most profound connection is with the visual arts – her strongest, most direct form of communication.

She trained classically as a fine arts major at Taylor University, Indiana and continued painting representationally for the next ten years doing commissions, while exhibiting minimally. Much later, after re-settling in Los Angeles, Johnson returned to studying art briefly at Otis College of Art & Design in 2005, transferring to Art Center College of Design in 2006 where she custom coordinated a Master’s-level type program and was mentored by the late Franklyn Liegel.

Since 2010, Johnson has been honored with 5 solo exhibitions across the United States, including a solo museum show at the Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Art; her sculpture and paintings have been included in numerous museum shows around the world, including: Armenia, Japan, China, Qatar, Italy and Thailand. Her work can be found in 7 Museum Permanent Collections internationally and can be viewed on permanent exhibition at the Arab American National Museum in Michigan, and several museums in Italy and Thailand. Residencies include: China, Italy, Japan, Thailand and Mexico.

Her work can be found in private and corporate collections across the globe. She resides in Southern California.

Painting is a shared emotional experience. In my own work, I begin with an emotional memory linked to the physical world. The art is then the distillation and tracing of that memory through color, texture, shape and brushstroke-palette knife to the emotional place where it lives. This might be a place of sadness, happiness, peace, exhilaration, or awe. The acknowledgment of emotion is transformative and teaches the lesson that everything in this world moves forward - beyond the edges of canvas, beyond our experiences, beyond the memories themselves.

Much of my work is about my lifelong love affair with Southern California. The paintings in my series “The Golden State” normally celebrate the beauty of the Southern California Sun – that swathes our cities, beaches and oceans in warmth and light. But they also speak to the power of Nature’s trifecta: Sun, Wind and Water; and the delicate balance that defines our environment and our California Lifestyle. As a Californian, I have learned that nature will heal itself with regeneration of the ecosystem and that we, as its inhabitants, will again be inspired to renew and rebuild as nature teaches us to do, challenging as it may be.

American Artist Frederika B. Roeder is a 4th Generation Southern Californian. Born in Palo Alto, California, her work follows Minimalism and the Light & Space Movement rooted in her experiences as a skier and surfer as part of Southern California’s iconic surf culture. Her abstract paintings are luminous expressions of the majesty of the natural world and the importance of its preservation.

Frederika exhibits her work continuously, with over 50 shows in museums and galleries since 2020. Exhibitions in 2024/25 include the 23rd Japan International Art Exchange Exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum curated by Julienne Johnson with chairman Katsu Shimmin; the Museo Camuno, Breno Italy; Galerie Diderot, Orquevaux, France; The Korean Culture Center, Los Angeles CA; Los Angeles Art Association/Art 1307/Instituto Italiano di Cultura with curator Cynthis Penna, consultant for contemporary art Centro Museale MUSA Portici, Italy.

A graduate of the University of Southern California, Frederika studied fine art at UC Irvine, UCLA, Pasadena City College, the Art Center of Design, Hunter College, and the School of Visual Arts in New York. While in New York, she studied under John Baldessari, and worked at Vogue Magazine under Diana Vreeland and Richard Avedon.

I am fascinated with the human form and the sense of particular places. I paint figures and landscape.

Every new painting presents a poetic opportunity to express the ordinary in an extraordinary way. Beyond rendering light, shape, form and color there lies a point between the literal and abstraction. In that place I can create a dialog between the obvious and the unexpected. Though my painting I can deconstruct what is in front of me and work towards a more compelling visual idea, expressed through loose brush strokes and a palette uniquely created for each work. Always on the look-out for new ways to manipulate paint, each canvas offers the opportunity to engage with pigments in an energetic application. At times I capture emotion, or introduce a narrative to draw in the viewer.

Whether I’m rendering a dancer, a fighter, a chef or an ancient stone wall I’m telling a story through paint.

Julie Snyder finds inspiration in athletes, dancers and the art of cuisine – from chefs to the table. The National Art Museum of Sport awarded her the Gold Medal for Painting 2013 for “Daily Drill,” painted in homage of women’s boxing, introduced at the London Olympics. Her 3rd inclusion in the museum’s “Commitment to Excellence” exhibitions.

She has exhibited with Contemporary Masters Artistic Eden at Pasadena’s Museum of History; The Oil Painters of America at Waterhouse Gallery, Santa Barbara; and Howard/Mandeville Gallery, Washington; Addison Art Gallery, Cape Cod, Boston International Fine Arts Show, Silvana Gallery's International Salon of Figurative Art, Glendale; Galerie du Soleil, Naples & with the California Art Club at the landmark Ebell Club of Los Angeles.

She studied drawing and painting at the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland.

Snyder is a seasoned traveler and makes trips Europe to paint, attracted by the landscape as well as the architecture as settings for figures. She enjoys meeting people from all cultures and is interested in collaborations with other artists.

She lives in Southern California, where she paints, holds workshops and teaches painting in Burbank and Montrose, CA and delivers painting workshops across the country.

She paints in oil, wet on wet with a balance of loose and tight brush work, using color and light to create interest and focus. Her paint quality is expressionistic as she captures the essential mood and gestures of her subjects.

In her works she tryes to create a plastic harmony between different materials, as: metals, enamel, wood, cotton, aso...

Through these relationships prooving her conviction about the strong relation between past and present.

Also she has interest about icons. Anastasia tryes to keep old icons traditions, but in the same time, she tryes to find some plastic and enamel technique for expression the deep meaning of icons.

Born in 1972, in Moskow, Russia.

In 1997 graduating the Design and Art College, Piatigorsk, Russia. 1999-2003 study in High School of Fine Art and Design, Jeleznovodsk, Russia.

Since 1993 seriously began working with hot painting enamel, teached a (lead) by her father, Vdovkin Nikolai - Russian artist.

Participating since 1993 at several exhibitions and International workshops in Russia, Ukraine, North Ossetia, Germany, India, Swiss, Hungary, Romania, Austria, Slovakia.

Member of Russian Union of Artists since 2003 and since 2005 is member of Romanian Artists Union.

The prizes:

2003, 2004- Grandprize at the International Enamel Symphosium in Kechkemet, Hungary.

2004- II-nd International Enamel Triennale in Budafok, Hungary.

2009- I International Enamel Biennale in Kiev, Ukraine.

2010- Grandprize at the International Enamel Biennale in S.-Peterburg, Russia.

In this time Anastasia lives and works in Romania.

Life is the best art there is.

Lara is a dancer and the artist. She is Goddess of Earth, her art represent Power of Knowledge, A Warrior Way to Impeccability.